QUIS CUSTODIET IPSOS CUSTODES
Means "Who Polices the Police?"

From the Houston Chronicle:

Crime lab faked results in 4 cases, probe finds

Houston Police Department crime lab analysts fabricated findings in at least four drug cases, an independent investigator reported Tuesday, including one in which a scientist performed no tests before issuing conclusions that supported a police officer's suspicions.

The allegations of so-called "drylabbing" — concocting results without conducting analyses — may be among the most serious leveled thus far in the more than two years since the crime lab came under scrutiny.

The report, released Tuesday, also casts doubt, for the first time, on the laboratory's largest division, controlled substances, which tests substances suspected of being drugs and performs about 75 percent of HPD's forensics work. The latest problems bring to five the number of crime lab disciplines where errors have been exposed — including DNA, toxicology, ballistics and the blood-typing science of serology.

" 'Drylabbing' is the most egregious form of scientific misconduct that can occur in a forensic laboratory," Michael Bromwich, a former U.S. Justice Department official leading an investigation of the HPD lab, wrote in the report.

Click here for the rest.

This Houston Police Department crime lab scandal continues to amaze me and it's been going on for a couple of years now. This probably is the worst story yet: the drug lab was just making shit up. I don't care what your politics are, this is simply intolerable. However, it's pretty much par for the course as far as what I've been saying about police culture being out of control. Cops are arrogant, generally, and often overly zealous about doing what they believe to be their job, that is, making busts. However, busting people and seeing justice done are two entirely different concepts. It seems that cop culture sees little difference between the two, and this ongoing scandal in Houston is a prime example of that.

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